Oliver Twist

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Summary: Thieves, paupers, and parish beadle- the main heroes.
Review: 'Oliver Twist' can be summarily defined as a well-staged soap-opera of a pre-TV age. The life of a main hero smacks of unnatural due to numerous sharp turns in his fate brought about by pure coincidences, which finally deliver him from the slum of life. To struggle through the part relating to a reader the life of Oliver in the family which adopted him, you have to possess a load of sentimentality which can afford you to listen to your national anthem twice a day and still enjoy it after a couple of years. However, if you manage to avoid all this schmaltz, you will discover a brilliant and curious piece of literature. Dickens, with his talent of journalist, produced a captivating, if strictly correct, account of London's underworld and the life poor people were forced to live at the time before the welfare state. The parts dealing with a gang of thieves and parish paupers make this book worth reading. Alas, in this case the canvas is more valuable than the portrait on it.

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Summary: great book
Review: Oliver Twist is a wonderful story. I feel bad for the people who hated it because of the run-on sentences and the long paragraphs. That doesn't make the book bad. It just tells you that those people are the type who only read TV guides and fail english.

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Summary: Dickens At His Most Snide & Sarcastic
Review: The story of an orphan boy literally sold for labor in Victorian England had to be told & Dickens describes the whole affair with a delightful sarcasm, sparing no one. The problem with this book is that it seems to wander off track, devolving into a sort of anti-semitic soap opera. Worth reading, but not Dickens' best.

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Summary: I loved this book!
Review: I picked this book up at my local library for a book report. Since I am 14, I didn't expect to really enjoy this book, but I had heard so much about it so I decided to read it. Once I had read the book, I was surprised at how much I liked it! I could not put this book down. There were numerous occasions where I kept wondering what would happen next. I was surprised by the murder. I guess I kind of saw it coming though since Sikes seems as if he has it in him. The trials Oliver goes through in this book really make you think. I was disappointed by Mr. Bumble. He treated Oliver as if he weren't human. All in all, I enjoyed the characters. I give 5 stars to Dickens for writing this novel. He has made me an admirer of his books. Now I truly know why he is such a great author. Everyone should experience this book!

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Summary: I really liked this book. I felt like I was there.
Review: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is a very old book that I just finished. It is about a young boy named Oliver Twist. He is an orphan who escapes the mean and cheerless workhouse and he goes to the streets in London during the 19th century. This book was very interesting. Charles Dickens wrote this book really well. He made it seem like I was living Oliver's life and going through all the bad and good times he had. When Oliver joined the band of the street urchins and their leader it seemed so fun, I wish I could have been there with them in the pick-pocketing game. When Oliver first got on the streets, he was sad and unhappy, then when he joined that band on the streets, he had alot of fun and laughed alot. Overall,Charles Dickens Oliver Twist tells how it would be like to be an orphan living on the streets. He made it seem so fun and interesting, and sometimes I even felt like I was there. Charles Dickens made me experience the sad parts of what being an orphan might be like. I highly reccommend this book to any Charles Dickens fans.

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Summary: Lame, lame, lame
Review: Yeah I agree with the reader from "My Computer, Of Course". This book is full of run-on sentences, and I hate the author's style of writing. I got about 100 pages into it and then quit reading. I simply had no interest in the story. This is one of those books that people are forced-fed in a high school English class.

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Summary: The best Dickens book ever
Review: This book has a lot of excitement about the Orphan Oliver life. This book turned out a wonderful ending. Master Bates, Oliver Twist, Fagin, Mr. Brownlow are great character. Don't read Great Expectations because this book will make you bore a lot.

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Summary: Not Dickens Best, But Good
Review: I am a big fan of Charles Dickens. I think that I might have liked this book better if not for two things. Number One, I hated how the introduction in the beginning said that Charles Dickens was Anti-Semetic when there is so much evidence which is shown in books like "The Friendly Dickens" which show that he is not Anti-Semetic at all. In fact, he drew Fagin as he was because that was just the stereotypical picture of a Jew, and he created Riah in his last novel to make amends for Fagin's evil Jew because it offended the Jewish public. I also didn't find the villians that interesting and when the views left Oliver and turned to Fagin and Sikes I was pretty bored. This novel started out good, but it faltered. I suggest that if you are a big fan of Dickens, buy this novel, but not this edition because of Nancy Springer (the author of the introduction) misleads the audience drastically.

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Summary: Although I am no longer living, I enjoyed writing this book.
Review: This is a tale of lonliness, separation, and a sociological snapshot of the time and children's treatment.

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Summary: Very gripping, but quite incomplete
Review: I have to admit that I was quite disappointed by this book that started out beautifully. About halfway through the book, Dickens dropped Oliver and started pursuing all of the books other chracters, of which,I might add, there are too many; if he really wanted to keep all of the characters then he should have made the book longer, or scratched a few of them. Although I did understand the book, the excess of characters forces the author to pursue each one of them, thus making the novel complicated. When I say that it was incomplete, I mean that it did not pursue all of Oliver's exploits, it was not a total attack on the system of society back then because it failed to impress sadness upon the reader at the end, simply because Oliver had a great life from twelve onwards. If he had been hung for doing nothing, simply falling into one of Fagin's setups, then this book would have had a bigger impact. Look at Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example. Tom dies an awful death a few days before his rescuer arrives, and Uncle Tom's Cabin caused the Civil War and the end of slavery! Finally, I think that Monks is introduced too late in the story, forcing Dickens to rapidly let the plot unfold at the very end of the book.